Day 24 – Appreciate and admire your partner!

24Aug

“Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.” By Alan Cohen

We all like to be appreciated, like our efforts to be noted and hard work to be rewarded. However interestingly, we may not on the other hand giving appreciation and expressing our gratitude frequently enough to others, to their efforts and hard work. In your relationship with your partner, do you wish your partner gives more appreciation and express more thankful thoughts? How about starting with you?

Take a moment to think about the below (write the answers down):

What do you appreciate about your partner that he or she does for you?

What do you appreciate or admire about your partner’s characters, personality, manners or qualities?

Why is your partner so special in your life?

Give yourself some time seriously think about them. Sometimes we tend to take granted for the most daily, routine and small events happening in our lives and the person who is closest to us. Once you have all the points for above questions, find pleasant time and romantic ways to appreciate your partner and let him or her know that you are thankful to have his or her participation in your life. (The more specific, the better)

Appreciation to our partners is not only recognitions of our partner’s efforts, actions of love and compromises, but also an affirmation of the love, respects and gratitude for each other, as well as it is an encouragement and enrollment of reciprocal response within the relationship. The benefits within the relationship may only multiply more and more.

Some couples may enter in a relationship, believing as they are in the relationship now, they would get what they expect of in a relationship, i.e. to be loved, served and being cared for by their partners. There are requirements and expectations already at the beginning of the relationship; so when they receive the fulfillments of expectation, they take everything for granted as ‘it is the way it supposes to be’. It’s a pity that no appreciation is given, especially when it FULFILLS the requirements and expectations!

Applying the glass-half-full or glass-half-empty theory to the case above, how do you see what your partner has done for you? Taking glass-half-full point of view: you start with no expectation and whatever your partner does for you and for the relationship, it fills up the relationship fuller and fuller. You appreciate your partner’s efforts and love him or she has for you; you see his or her abundance in love and you are grateful and happier. However, on the other hand with glass-half-empty, where you already have the expectation of fullness, so if your partner missing out or not doing something for you or for the relationship, it gets lesser and lesser in the relationship; not only that you would not be appreciative about his or her efforts, but perhaps start to feel deprived by. You see the inadequacy of your partner and become more disappointed and unhappy. No matter which view you take, it doesn’t change how much your partner has done; but your view affects how you treat your partner and how you develop the relationship further. So which view would you take?

Today I love my partner by: (share it aloud to your partner)

Appreciating my partner’s efforts and not taking for granted on what he or she has done for me and for our relationship.

For your actions:

(1) Find out (a) what do you appreciate about your partner that he or she does for you? (b) What do you appreciate or admire about your partner’s characters, personality or qualities? (c) Why is your partner so special in your life? (The three points above) and share with your partner!